


After

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Food Issues, Forced Institutionalization, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, PTSD, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The game spit her out broken, but there's a hole in her memory for the times when she put the pieces back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After

When you awake, you’re face-down in soft grass that smells of home. Your limbs feel heavy and your head is splitting. Your hair tangles around you. Off to the side, your glasses are cracked, the frames bent. You try to reach out but you can’t quite make it. Your fingers briefly brush against your rifle but don’t have the strength to clutch on.  
  
You want to curl into yourself. You want to sleep. You don’t want to get up.  
  
There’s a horrendous noise from one of the tips of your island: a helicopter. Too many of your synapses are fried for you to comprehend why, even as the medical crew leaps into action. Did you set the alert yourself years ago? Did one of your friends know who to call? Did Bec…  
  
You’re so tired. So, so tired. But the second one of the crew touches you, you scream and bat her hand away. It’s a reflex, this clawing at them, and your nails draw blood before they can wrestle you into an upright position. You lean down to bite at one of their hands, but they slip a tongue depressor between your teeth and choke you with it.  
  
You’re strapped down to a guerney and rolled towards the helicopters. The noise of the blades deafens you as a cold seeps into your bones and you lose consciousness yet again.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject 413: pubescent girl, approximately thirteen years old. Prior documentation shows her name to be Jade Harley. Her medical file is nonexistent and her government records are sparse. Will continue to note important information for coordination of care in the absence of any known guardian._  
  
\--  
  
You wake in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar tower in an unfamiliar world.  
  
You’re not sure which is worse, being awake or being asleep. Being awake means you have to think about everything that happened. Being asleep means you get to live through everything that happened, except in worse permutations and combinations of events than your waking mind could ever torment you with. You’ve seen all your friends die at least once.  
  
You don’t know how much of that is the dream and how much of that is reality.  
  
For almost two weeks they keep you under constant sedation, and you’re so fuzzy you can’t tell the difference between light and dark, between reality and virtual reality.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject appears to be narcoleptic but to suffer from dysphoric dream sequences. Imaging shows her to have unusually strong REM activity. Current medications: zolpidem, 15mg, thrice daily._  
  
\--  
  
They put food in front of you. You won’t eat it.  
  
It’s not that you’re not hungry. It’s that the hunger has mellowed out into an emptiness in your system and you don’t know anything that will fill that void. The hospital food has the consistency of glue and you don’t know where they grew their vegetables but it doesn’t look appetizing.  
  
After a while, they stop trying to force-feed you and put you on a nutrient drip instead. You don’t fight them. It’s easier this way.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject refuses to ingest solids. One of our internists has offered to prepare her home-cooked meals in the hopes of introducing her to food again. Weight loss to be monitored and intervention staged should it rise above ten percent. Subject appears listless but will not speak about what troubles her._  
  
\--  
  
They tell you to wash your hair or they’ll cut it off for you. You need the thick black curtain to hide behind, so you follow their hands as they guide you into the shower.  
  
It scalds you, but you don’t move from under the spray. A watercolor rainbow runs down your body, circles the drain. You shiver and clutch at yourself; it’s the first time you’ve felt truly ashamed to be naked.  
  
When you finally climb out, they betray you, sitting you down and clacking a set of shears close to your ears for emphasis. You cry when they clip your tangled split ends.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject is exhibiting repetitive motion behaviors. She has taken up brushing her hair with whatever means she can find. We have felt a hairbrush to be too dangerous at this time, but she finds her plastic comb fascinating. When taken from her, she runs her fingers through her hair. One of our interns even observed her using a dinner fork as a comb._  
  
\--  
  
“Do you have any interests?”  
  
They’ve been asking you the same questions since they started talking to you. Since there’s nothing interesting about this place in your eyes, you no longer have any interests. However, you find yourself doodling hearts and vines on the legal pad the interviewer gave you at the start of the session.  
  
“What were your friends like?”  
  
Brave. Godly. Murderous. Strong. Dead.  
  
“Jade, can you hear me?”  
  
You look up at him through the glasses they’ve given you, the ones that don’t quite fit your prescription, and you nod.  
  
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”  
  
You bite your lip, hard, and you start to bleed. This is the third time you’ve bitten through it since you’ve been here – days and weeks and even months no longer seem relevant. You don’t feel like talking, and just in case there was any question of it, the blood is trickling down your face, dripping off your chin onto your paper.  
  
You suddenly think of passwords and feel your eyes start to itch again.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject refuses to speak during one-on-one sessions. We have increased their frequency to four times daily in the hope that shorter exposure would entice her to interact with her interviewers, but so far she has only nodded and shaken her head to indicate simple yes-and-no answers. We anticipate greater progress in group therapy._  
  
\--  
  
“Hi, I’m Jacey. I’m fourteen and I’m here because I’m a schizo.”  
  
She seems so normal to you; you can’t fathom why she’s here. It’s your turn to speak now, though. When you stand, your knees knock together. You haven’t spoken since you arrived here, and so your voice comes out scratchy. “Hello.” It comes out tremulous, less cheery than you thought it would sound. “My name is Jade. I’m thirteen still, I think.” Besides that, there’s not much you know, so you sit back down and hide behind your hair.  
  
The nurse in charge of group, though, won’t allow that to happen. “Jade, why don’t you tell us why you’re here?”  
  
You fumble with words for a moment. You can feel the stares of the other kids on you. The only thing that feels right is the truth. “I played an online game with three of my friends,” you say, your voice stronger with every word. “We were sucked into an alternate-reality plane where we met twelve really cool aliens who made our universe! A lot of bad things happened… My friends’ guardians died and I lost my dog. Then my friends started dying, too. But we had a job to do! We had to save the world! And I guess we did, because now I’m here.”  
  
The other kids just gape at you for a few seconds. When one starts giggling at you, the rest follow suit, and soon you’re running from the room, covering your face as you cry.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject continues to be difficult in her interactions. Her insistence on her view of reality is making it difficult for her to adjust mentally and socially to the lifestyle of a typical teenage girl._  
  
\--  
  
“Your files indicate that you were brought up by your grandfather until you were eight. Who stepped in to take his place?”  
  
You remain silent. The doodle on the legal pad you’re holding is the dog’s-head logo from your favorite shirt. You don’t have any of your own clothes here. You miss them.  
  
“And you were homeschooled, is that correct? I see no record of public school attendance.”  
  
You taught yourself everything you know from the Internet. Even the bad things. Especially the bad things. “Yes,” you say quietly.  
  
Your interviewer looks at you with an expression of surprise she doesn’t attempt to subdue. “We’re making progress,” she says.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject has begun to speak when in individual sessions. After her failure to integrate in a group setting, we discouraged this manner of therapy. Currently investigating what pharmacological treatments are at our disposal. Diagnosis after six months: post-traumatic stress disorder complicated by severe unipolar depression._  
  
\--  
  
You throw up the first time they give you the pills.  
  
And the second.  
  
And the third.  
  
You try to tell them it’s not your fault, but they think it’s an act of insubordination, whatever that means. You can’t help it if the pills make you sick.  
  
They keep adjusting the doses. Some days the pills are purple, some days they’re blue, some days they’re pink, some days they’re yellow. There’s always some that stay the same, like that gigantic white one that’s hard for you to swallow without gagging on, and after a little bit they add a capsule that you have to split apart and stir into a drink.  
  
You don’t know what they’re doing to you, but you don’t want to feel like this any more and you’re willing to try anything.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject displays several adverse side effects even after attempting over ten different drug combinations. Consulting with Dr. Score to assess the appropriateness of ECT as a last-resort measure._  
  
\--  
  
They tell you it isn’t going to hurt. Of course you don’t believe them. Still, you can’t reach the utter fear lurking in your gut because they doped you with something. You know this isn’t normal and you’re scared.  
  
For a week they explained to you what this would be like. It’s not like in the movies, they told you. Except so far it has been: there are electrodes placed on your skull at random, and the straps holding you in the chair chafe against the scrapes on the insides of your forearms where you scratch yourself while you sleep.  
  
They warn you gently before they start the machine, but you still can’t quite get settled until the first pulse hits you. You come to fifteen seconds later feeling itchy under your skin, and the familiar pricks of tears are haunting your eyes. The second pulse leaves you with a cotton mouth and an inaudible buzzing sound. By the third pulse, you’re sobbing from the discomfort.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject has responded well to initial round of ECT. Dr. Score suggests move to higher amp and wattage in order to increase effectiveness._  
  
\--  
  
“Are you used to a small family or a big family?”  
  
For a while it was you and Grandpa and Bec. Then it was just you and Bec. Now it’s just you. “Small,” you say decisively.  
  
“Would you like to live with a family again?”  
  
You think about it while you doodle some more. It’s the initials GG over and over again. You don’t know why you have such a connection to it, but it nudges insistently against a huge gap that’s formed in your already-terrible memory. “What kind of family?” you say eventually.  
  
“Two parents, a mother and a father. An older brother who’s away at college and a younger brother who is a junior in high school. If you like this placement, we can have it arranged so you can start public school in the fall.”  
  
You shrug. You can take care of yourself well enough. Having other people around would be interesting and new, but you’d be able to handle it.  
  
“Good. We’ll start the enrollment process. You’d be about a sophomore in high school by now…”  
  
Now the interviewer has your attention. “Really?”  
  
“Well, yes, that’s generally where girls of your age are placed.” There’s a strange expression on her face that might be pity.  
  
You’re confused. “But I’m only thirteen!”  
  
“Jade,” and the name sounds strange to you, “you’ve been here for over two years. You’ll be sixteen in December.”  
  
It takes her five full minutes to recall your attention.  
  
\--  
  
 _Subject has displayed admirable recovery. Foster parents are eager to welcome her into their home. Continued weekly outpatient therapy sessions recommended but not required. Narcolepsy and night terrors will continue to be ongoing factors interminably. Overall prognosis: excellent._  
  
\--  
  
> Enter name.  
  
Your name is Jade Harley. You sign this in squiggles in the little box, and the digital signature gets stamped onto the card next to the picture that doesn’t look quite like you. You are sixteen years old and holding your first driver’s license.  
  
You grin for the first time in years.


End file.
